By whatever means she got it, we had perfection. But it could not have gone on. We are not divine. Or I am not; she had made herself above Earth People. What has happened to me, it is like what happened to many people long ago. It happened to Taught Himself and the Magician’s Daughter, to Reared in a Mountain when he went through the homes of the gods, to Eagles’ Friend when he went to the sky. They went away and saw something better than they had ever known. They did not try to bring something too good for earth back to earth. But they did not—lose—Slim Girl.
His head fell forward on his knees and he stopped thinking. He was exhausted, and shortly fell asleep in that position. He woke when he began to fall over, very cold, and thought he must have drowsed. The fire was low. The snowfall ceased and dawn came limping.
The first day was sparkling, crisp, and sunny. The first day was one of stunned, dull realization. He wandered about uncertainly and drugged himself with detailed, long-drawn-out memories. And in the end, he would return to the beginning of his circle and stand or sit motionless and groan. It was a long day and a strange one; later he did not remember it clearly.
The second night he tried hard not to sleep, but it was hard, with cold, hunger, fatigue, and the fire. He dozed a good deal, and his memories became very accurate dreams into which slowly would creep a sense of horror without reason, until he woke, not knowing he had slept, continuing the thought and the mood. He tried to pray, but it was chiefly ejaculations and the names of the gods. It was an endless and terrible night.
Daylight, when at last it came, was a release. He shook himself, thinking, I must be calm, I must think clearly. This is no time for wandering without getting anywhere.
He quieted himself for a time, achieving a state of apparent resignation which enabled him to pray, but the oft-repeated hozoji sounded hollow. He did not really think there was anything beautiful; he was just acting as he thought he ought.
Plenty of people had died in his neighbourhood; there had been mourning and grief, when everyone had stayed close to the hogans for four days. But this was different. He had seen the bereaved, he had seen real sorrow upon them, but he could not believe that they had felt as he did.
He was alone in more than the physical sense. No one, not even Jesting Squaw’s Son, could come near him. All his life, wherever he was, however long he lived, he would remain alone. It would always be like this. The one companionship in the world had gone; when the sun has been destroyed for a man, what comfort is there in a world of moonlight?
He had nothing to do in the canyon save tend his fire and think. He would get hold of a thought, work it over and over until he lost all sense of proportion towards it, and finally put it in a phrase or a simile, so that it obtained substance and could not be dismissed.
He hated to watch it grow dark; he felt afraid of the night. He did not want to be shut into that little space of firelight with all the things he was thinking. Alone, alone, all life alone, all life carrying this pain inside himself. He might as well die. But she wanted him to live. It was the third night, and he was approaching the stage of visions. Outlines of things dimly seen in the starlight changed and assumed startling forms. He became the audience listening to unseen people arguing as to whether he ought to kill himself or not. He knew he ought to live, but he could not control which side might win.
He couldn’t always follow very well what was going on. Extraneous things intruded themselves. There were people all around, pitying him. It was being insisted upon that loneliness and pain were not worth enduring for a whole lifetime, without purpose.
“But I have to live for her,” he said aloud, and thought hard about her.
Then he saw her, standing on the other side of the fire. He started to his feet, choking with all a Navajo’s terror of the walking dead. He was dissolved in fear, but she was gone. He was alone, the voices were gone, the people. He sat down, trembling, and quite wide awake. Evidently he did not want to die, but he had no will to live; he did not know himself, it would be wrong to make a decision now. Little by little he grew drowsy, and dozed in snatches. Perhaps her coming was a good thing; one would not expect her ghost to be like other people’s.
This, too, became a discussion outside himself. The spirits of the dead are bad; if they walk, it is for destruction. She is different, she would come to protect him. She would lead him to some frightful end. But no one could imagine blue fire coming out of her eyes and mouth. It went on and on. There was an outline of something he had not seen before, it moved and he felt his scalp crawl. Then he let out a deep sigh and related. It was a bush, some little distance away. Dawn was coming.
A little water and the clear sunshine revived him for a time, but soon he was tired and miserable again, listlessly occupying himself with gathering more firewood, bringing a branch at a time, setting aside without interest those that would do for making a sweat-bath. Later, he thought of that day as the day of treason. He protracted his occupation, being meticulous about finding all the wood in
